sudar

I have some questions about the Arduino Bootloader. Hope someone can help me understand it better.

I did some research on it and following are my current understanding. Let me know if anyone of them is not true.

- To program any AVR (or any Microcontroller) you need an external hardware called programmer. But bootloader solves this problem in Arduino, by not requiring the programmer.- When the chip (with a bootloader) is powered on (or reset), it waits for sometime to see if there is a any new code. If not it continues to load the old code present in the chip- You can also use a working Arduino as a programmer to program other AVR chips.

Now my questions regarding the bootloader

- If I am always going to use an Arduino as a programmer to (re)program my new AVR chip, do I still need to burn the bootloader into the new chip?- Can I burn the bootloader into non-Arduino AVR chips like AtMega 16A or ATTiny 85?

More or less correct.With a programmer, you can: load a sketch that will start immediately after a reset; or you can load a bootloader that watches for serial communication and performs self-programming, and if no serial comm occurs then the bootloader starts the sketch.

Arduino can be loaded with a programmer sketch to load other parts per the above.

New chip does not need a bootloader, it can be programmed with a sketch. Select File:Upload Using Programmer.(have not tried that personnally, I have a standalone programmer (several actually), less wires to mess with).Check www.avr-developers.com to see if cores & bootloaders exist for the other chips if you do not see the chips listed as being used on an existing board type.

sudar

More or less correct.With a programmer, you can: load a sketch that will start immediately after a reset; or you can load a bootloader that watches for serial communication and performs self-programming, and if no serial comm occurs then the bootloader starts the sketch.

Arduino can be loaded with a programmer sketch to load other parts per the above.

New chip does not need a bootloader, it can be programmed with a sketch. Select File:Upload Using Programmer.(have not tried that personnally, I have a standalone programmer (several actually), less wires to mess with).

If you'll use other chips like attiny and other atmega i suggest you to program it directly from arduino with the .hex file using a GUI like avrdudegui or other and bypassing the bootloader so you could have more space in the flash memoryHi niko (sorry for my English but I'm Italian)